School of No Consequences. Exercises for a New Life
What would a life look like that – in the ecological, but also in the virological sense – remains as inconsequential as possible? Could a lack of consequences become a new regulative ideal, such as freedom, justice and equality, unattainable but still desirable? What would be the effects of such a striving on the material and immaterial organization of our everyday life, on the economic and social order, on our faith and the way we treat each other? And what models can be found for such a life in the present and in history?
These are the questions posed by the School of No Consequences. Exercises for a New Life, an artistic-discursive project by Friedrich von Borries. At the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MK&G), artefacts from the depot, interventions in the existing collection and a "self-learning room" set up especially for the exhibition are linked in such a way that a new perspective on "sustainability" is created and supposedly universally valid ideas of "real life" are questioned.
The School of No Consequences thereby enters an open associative space that is constituted by practices, models of thought, and constructions of meaning from different times, spaces, and cultures. The image of inconsequence draws - sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes intentionally, sometimes accidentally - on various sources of inspiration, ranging from religious (e.g. the Christian ascetics or Buddhist nirvana) to philosophical (e.g. the ancient Stoics, but also contemporaries such as Henning Ottmann ) contexts and, of course, touching on art (e.g. Bazon Brock).
An app developed by the Berlin artists*in refrakt (Alexander Govoni and Carla Streckwall) tests new ways of teaching and mediation. It leads playfully through the exhibition and provides in-depth content such as interviews with experts. Furthermore, it invites visitors to intervene artistically in social and urban space and to share the results with the hashtag in social media.
The project is funded by Behörde für Wissenschaft, Forschung, Gleichstellung und Bezirke Hamburg (BWFGB), Hamburg Open Online University (HOOU), Friede Springer Stiftung, Kursbuch Kulturstiftung and Hamburg Innovation GmbH. The Scholarship for Doing Nothing is fundey by Leinemann Kunststiftung Nikolassee. Further partners are Katholische Akademie Hamburg and Evangelische Akademie der Nordkirche.